“And then, Alice?” said I, eagerly.
“And then? there was very little more, Miss Hester—she was hurried out of this world when you were born; she had never time to say a word to him, and went away with that bitterness in her heart, that the man she had left father and mother for, never understood her. Death tries faith, my dear, though you know nothing of it! think how I stood looking at her white face in her last rest! Thinking of her life and her youth, and that this was the end of all; so carefully as she had been trained and guarded from a child, and all her education and her books, and such hopes as there were of what she would be when she grew up a woman; but soon I saw that she grew up only to die—God never changes, Miss Hester—he tries a poor woman like me very like the way he tried Abraham—and that was what I call a fiery passage for faith!”
“And my mother, Alice? and poor, poor papa! oh! how did he ever live after it?” cried I, through my tears.
“He lived because it was the will of God—as we all do,” said Alice, “a sad man, and a lonely he is to this day: and will never get comfort in his heart for the wrong he did my dear young lady—never till he meets her in heaven.”
At that moment Alice was called and went away. Poor, poor papa! he was wrong; but how my heart entered into his sufferings. I did not think of the bitterness of love disbelieved and disturbed, of my mother’s silent martyrdom—I thought only of my father, my first of men! He loved her, and he thought she pitied him. I started from my seat at the touch of this intolerable thought. I realized in the most overwhelming fulness, what he meant when he said, “Pity is a cheat!” Pity! it was dreadful to think of it—though it was but a mistake, a fancy—what a terrible cloud it was!
I will not say that this story filled my mind so much, that I do not recollect the other events of that day; on the contrary, I recollect them perfectly, down to the most minute detail; but they are all connected in my mind with my grief for my father—with the strange, powerful compassion I had for him, and some involuntary prescience of my own fate. For it was him I thought of, and never my mother, whom I had never seen, and whose gentle, patient temper was not so attractive to my disposition. No—I never thought he was to blame! I never paused to consider if it was himself who had brought this abiding shadow over his life. I only echoed his words in my heart, and clung to him, in secret, with a profound and passionate sympathy. Pity! I shuddered at the word. I no longer wondered at his haughty rejection of the slightest approach to it—for did not I myself share—exaggerate this very pride.
This mournful tedious day went on, and its dreary business was accomplished: all our belongings were taken away from Cottiswoode, and Alice and another servant accompanied them to set our new house in order before we came. Just before she went away, at noon, when the autumn day was at its brightest, I found Alice cutting the roses from my favorite tree. I stood looking at her, as she took the pale faint flowers one by one, but neither of us spoke at first: at last I asked her, “why do you take them, Alice?” and I spoke so low, and felt so reverential that I think I must have anticipated her reply.
I had to bend forward to her, to hear what she said. “They were your mother’s,” said Alice, “I decked her bride chamber with them, and her last bed. They are like what she was when trouble came.”
She had only left one rose upon the tree, a half blown rose, with dew still lying under its folded leaves, and she went away, leaving me looking at it. I felt reproved, I know not why, as if my young mother was crying to me for sympathy, and I would not give it. No! I went back hastily to the dreary half-emptied library where my father sat. My place was by him—this solitary man, who all his life had felt it rankling in his heart, that he was pitied where he should have been loved.
In the evening, just before sunset, I heard wheels approaching, and on looking out, saw the post-chaise which was to take us to Cambridge coming down the avenue. My father saw it also; we neither of us said anything, but I went away at once to put on my bonnet. It was dreadful to go into these desolate rooms, which were all the more desolate because they were not entirely dismantled, but still had pieces of very old furniture here and there, looking like remains of a wreck. After I had left my own room—a vague dusty wilderness now, with the damp air sighing in at the open lattice, and the loose jessamine bough beating against it, and dropping its dreary little leaves—I stole into the dining parlor for a moment to look at that picture which was like Edgar Southcote. I looked up at it with my warm human feelings, my young, young exaggerated emotions, full of resentful dislike and prejudice; it looked down on me, calm, beautiful, melancholy, like a face out of the skies. Pity, pity, yes! I hurried away stung by the thought. Edgar Southcote had the presumption to pity my father and me.